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Karen Blum’s legacy at Suffolk Law includes a distinguished four-decade teaching career, and now a major gift commitment to support stipends for students interning with state and federal judges. Photograph: Michael J. Clarke
Fall 2024
Karen Blum, JD ’74, still bears the scar on her right hand from when, as a 7-year-old girl growing up in New Haven, Connecticut, she punched through a window to protest a group of neighborhood boys who’d set up a club and wouldn’t allow girls to participate. Blum says the act was impulsive and painful—not only for her, but also her father, who had to repair the window—but indicative of her sense, even then, that “there has to be fairness; there has to be justice.”
That moment would set the tone for a life dedicated to opening doors for others. It led Blum to Suffolk University Law School—first as a student, and then, for 43 years, as a professor, a nationally renowned expert on federal civil rights law and qualified immunity, and today, as a Dean's Cabinet member.
As an educator, she has shaped the minds of thousands of Suffolk Law students. As an expert providing legal training on complex federal civil rights law to new federal judges and as co-author of the highly influential book Police Misconduct: Law and Litigation, as well as dozens of scholarly articles, she has helped shape the thinking of dozens of judges and practitioners.
“I always knew I was going to do something that involved making sure people were treated the way they should be treated,” Blum says. “It was just ingrained in me.”
And while Blum retired from full-time teaching in 2017, earlier this year she found a new door to open: She made a major gift and became a President's Circle member of the Summa Society. Her purpose? To expand students’ access to prestigious—but unpaid—summer internships, by providing them with stipends.
By Michael Fisch
Family lessons in fairness
To support FYSIP and learn more about the anniversary celebration, visit suffolk.edu/blumchallenge
Born Karen Frankel, she grew up in a working-class household, surrounded by a spirit of inclusion from an early age. Her mother worked three jobs—as a bus driver, dance instructor, and driving teacher—and rented rooms to international students from Yale in the family’s three-decker home. The house buzzed with visitors of different races and nationalities, a pot of coffee always on the stove.
“There were always people from different countries, students who were in and out of the house,” Blum recalls. At that time, her mother was the only driving instructor in New Haven who would teach Puerto Ricans how to drive. “She cared about people being treated fairly and feeling welcome,” Blum says.
Blum’s first experience in court came at 16, when her mother sent her to the New Haven County courthouse. While driving to work, one of her mother’s Puerto Rican students, José, had been arrested for driving without a license. “You can’t put José in jail!” Blum yelled from the back of the courtroom. The judge was not moved, so Blum spent the rest of the day with José’s wife canvassing the neighborhood to gather bail money.
Along with her husband, Jeffrey Blum, she enrolled at Suffolk Law in 1970—just one of ten women in the evening class of roughly 300 students and the first evening student to be an editor on the Suffolk Law Review. By day, she taught students with learning disabilities and discovered she loved being in front of a classroom.
After graduation, she served as a legal practical skills instructor at the Law School for two years while completing a specialized legal master’s program at Harvard. She joined the Suffolk Law faculty in a tenure-track position in 1976.
In 2005, Blum found a way to open doors for students from all backgrounds.
When she noticed the difficulty her law students faced finding meaningful summer positions after their initial year of classwork, Blum created the First-Year Summer Internship Program (FYSIP). The program places rising 2L students in internships with state and federal judges.
It’s the kind of opportunity that can really shape a student’s entire law school experience, she says: “Working with a judge builds students’ confidence, provides real-world context that helps in the classroom, and forges relationships that lead to high-powered internships and better jobs.”
Yet unpaid internships, even prestigious ones, can be out of reach for students who are also juggling rent and other living expenses.
In the early days of FYSIP, two former students who had benefitted from the program suggested that a fund be set up to provide stipends for FYSIP students. Blum donated $1,000 to the fund to help students cover their travel costs and continued to support the fund with annual gifts.
And this year, she made a transformational $500,000 gift commitment to support stipends for FYSIP participants. As FYSIP approaches its 20th anniversary (a celebration is planned for April 2025), she hopes her gift will inspire others to contribute as well, to ensure that financial constraints don’t prevent talented students from accessing life-changing opportunities.
What started as a small program placing about 15 students every summer has grown significantly, and since 2008 it has been administered by the Law School’s Office of Professional & Career Development. In the summer of 2024, 80 FYSIP students interned with approximately 70 judges and courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
There’s a large cohort of judges for students to work for. In Massachusetts, more than a quarter of the sitting state court judges are Suffolk Law graduates; in Rhode Island, the figure balloons to 40%.
The scar on Karen Blum’s hand may have faded, but her impact on the legal world and her students endures.
“You look at the people who ascend to these great jobs in the law,” she says, “and a lot of them are individuals who had the gift of a judicial clerkship, where they learned practical skills and built relationships that opened doors.” She wants that same gift to be given widely to students from all walks of life. “Some students are going to need financial assistance to do an internship,” she says, “and if I had unlimited resources, I would do even more. But I am thrilled to do what I can.”
An enduring impact